Monthly Archives: April 2012

Here’s recent progress on my comic/sci-fi young adult project where a girl becomes a ninja and fights aliens with much ass-kicking and many LOLs but not a whole lot of kissing (or any kissing, to be frank) plus BONUS Bruce Lee’s ghost, a vintage Thunderbird, zenlightenment on the fly, and fat stacks of Cool Ranch Doritos.

Things accomplished in fiction: Bad things. Aliens grow bored with keeping their distance, and come in for a closer look. This doesn’t go well for anyone – particularly not anyone in or around the Bonneville salt flats.

Things accomplished in real life: Went to the post office; went to Walgreens; scanned some contracts for reference’s sake and sent them off to my agent; conducted other assorted misc. bits of Writer Business; tided apartment and would’ve cleaned the bathroom but decided against it for now; also skipped laundry but that needs to happen this weekend; argh this is turning into a to-do list, not a did-list.

Other: Logged onto Google+ to find it redesigned beyond recognition. Felt like an idiot because I couldn’t figure out how to post anymore. Did eventually figure it out. Still felt like an idiot. But you know, I never do anything but cross-post links to blog updates over there … so I might just scrap the account. I don’t know. We’ll see.

It’s been a very social couple of weeks over here – which is partly (I admit, only partly) responsible for my dearth of posting. First we had ECCC and the lovely out-of-towners who showed up for it; and then we had Norwescon, and the subsequent fine non-locals; and now Stina Leicht has had the unmitigated GALL to hang around Seattle, having a wonderful time and luring us hermity residents out into the rain.*

In fact, just last night she and I (and Kat and Liz and Melissa-who-must-remain-unlinked-at-this-time.) took the Seattle Ghost Tour. The tour itself was actually a lot of fun; I was familiar with only a few of the stories, and I learned some nifty nuggets of story fodder which I have filed away for later.

After the tour we stopped at one of the places we’d actually visited while on the tour – an Irish pub/restaurant in an allegedly haunted building. Yes, well. We pressed our supernatural luck.

Didn’t encounter any ghosts. Did encounter some wholly unexpected hilarity.

Picture it: a table of five women, all married, tipsy, most of us old enough to have children of bar-visiting age. (Technically. Mind you.) Now picture an uncommonly attractive, terribly young body-builder in a very-tight shirt, sauntering up to our table to ask what we were drinking …

…whereupon we reached the 100 PERCENT REASONABLE conclusion that this must be our new waiter.

Now look – we all agreed that it took significant testicular volume to approach a table full of women in such a fashion. We didn’t intend to laugh at him or send him slinking away, a puddle of mortified man-ooze. Far from it! As we told him, we were flattered – very flattered – and we appreciated his interest. But I do confess, some measure of giggling might’ve occurred as we all displayed our wedding rings.

It was just … Jesus, you have to understand: By the time we realized he was trying to pick us up (individually or en masse – however it shaped up), it was entirely too late to pretend this wasn’t awkward. We’d already asked about the specials!

So we thought we’d made ourselves clear in a friendly but firm fashion – but we were wrong about that, too. Because then he asked in all seriousness: “You’re all like … married married? Not even, like, married … but with some gray area?” Repeatedly. While “leading with the wang,” if you ladies know what I mean.

Finally, Liz suggested that if he was that desperate to buy us something, he should mosey over to the bar and bring us a dessert menu. Hey, our spouses prefer a little junk in the trunk! Help a sister out, Captain Ticklepants!

He declined, and wandered off.
So we bought dessert ourowndamnselves.

* In all fairness, it’s actually been relatively nice the last few days. This is because Seattle lies to people. It rolls out the temperate, blue-sky bait for those who are just passing through – spreading the rumor that this is a beautiful place where the residents get plenty of Vitamin D.

Lately I haven’t done enough writing to warrant mentioning it, so I’ll skip the word metrics for now. In my defense, this whole “planning a big-ass move” thing can really eat up brain cells, I tell you what – even though we’re still over two weeks away from showtime.

I know this will all be worth it in the end, but I am not looking forward to carrying big heavy boxes. I am not looking forward to the drive.

And I am especially not looking forward to making the drive with one outraged, indignant animal on board.

Spain the Cat is terrible in a car. Every waking moment in transit, she acts like she’s being beaten with a sock full of pennies – when in fact she is riding in a spacious, sturdy, well-ventilated carrier* … snuggled on her favorite Comfy BlanketTM and surrounded by some of her most reassuring squishy toys.

Here. I give you a voice post from the road in 2006, at the start of my journey to Seattle. BEHOLD the HELLCAT. And yes, she did that the entire time she we were on the road. I kept thinking her voice would give out eventually, or she’d get tired and take a nap. Nope! It was all cat protest music, all the time, all the way to Washington.

For this trip, we’ve come to our senses – and we’re heading to the vet to nab some kitty knockout drops. NAY, ALL OF THE KITTY KNOCKOUT DROPS. I want this little monster to snooze halfway to the Mississippi River, and I’m sure my husband will be happiest that way too – after all, he’ll be stuck with her at least half of the trip.

I am only human, and I’ve already had to do this once, coming west. I cannot seriously be expected to have her riding shotgun all the way back east, too.

________

And now for one of my peculiarly popular and utterly pointless television roundups. Ahem.

Still not interested in Once Upon A Time anymore, which frankly pains me. I wanted to care about it, but the characters just don’t make a damn bit of sense and now I’m bored. So I’m officially calling my interest in that one All the Way Dead.

But I’m back on the Grimm bandwagon, much to my own surprise. I skipped it for a few weeks, then caught a new episode and kind of liked what I saw. This having been said, if it were up to me, I’d kill off Nick and Juliette both, and make the show about Monroe and Rosalee running that fabulous little store together – solving mysteries and fighting crime among the supernatural population of the Pacific Northwest. I would watch the shit out of that.

In other news, the husband and I finally caught up on Justified and hot damn, I love that show. I avoided it for a long time, mostly because I didn’t really care to watch Hollywood make fun of Appalachia for an hour at a time … since that’s how I assumed it’d play out.

But no! It’s clever, funny, tense, and surprising. I love how it’s not actually the Raylan Show, and no one is more confused by that than Raylan. I love all the badass women. I love Limehouse. I love Boyd, and if you’d told me I’d come to love Boyd after I’d seen only the first couple of episodes, I would’ve laughed in your face.

And that’s mostly what I love: I love how this show has a knack for subverting my expectations. I am hopelessly charmed by it, because every time I say, “Man, I hope the writers know what they’re doing,” it turns out that they do. Which makes for a happy, happy Cherie.

Except that now we’re all caught up, and we have to wait for new episodes like ordinary mortals. Ah, well.

* Cat carriers usually are “rated” for cats up to ten or twelve pounds. Spain the Cat is, um, bigger than that; she’s a Maine Coon mix with what could best be described as a “sedentary” lifestyle. Her carrier is made to hold mid-sized dogs.